


Bad Day at the Office

by TheDarknessFactor



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Mild Smut, ladies being awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 10:20:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4431515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarknessFactor/pseuds/TheDarknessFactor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha belies her caustic statement by ducking her head to kiss his temple.  “Bruce, I wasn’t complaining.  I’d assumed I was going with you.”</p>
<p>Bruce blinks.  “You want to go?”</p>
<p>“I can enjoy a science-y convention thing.”</p>
<p>“’The only kind of language I can’t exactly speak is the convoluted dialect of physical science’.  Your words, not mine.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Day at the Office

**Author's Note:**

> MY FIRST REAL ATTEMPT AT SMUT *hides face* I really, really hope it's okay.
> 
> This was the prompt: " Smut so I’m not the only one??? Haha, and/or, like, Bruce gets called up to do a conference and Nat goes along as his publicist/bodyguard (road trip? hotel? etc. tropes). Fluff or mission, either way! :D "
> 
> Oh, also: be prepared for a buttload of prompt fills. I have SO MANY to publish.

Natasha hasn’t had a lot of chances to wake up in bed with someone, let alone with someone she cares about.

In the past, ‘sex’ for her meant that her would-be partner was usually dead before it was over or that she was in her clothes and out the door before they had the chance to catch their breath.  Granted, those men and women in particular had been informed that there were no emotions involved, so they never complained.  This time, however, mustering the will to do much more than curl around Bruce from behind had been difficult.

As the case may be, the sun isn’t quite up yet, so Natasha is almost comfortable enough to just go back to sleep.

Almost.

(Not really.)

She kisses the back of his neck a few times, pauses for a reaction, then gently bites down on a tendon.   _That_ gets his attention, which he projects with a low groan that goes straight to her center.  She soothes the bite with her tongue, grinning against his skin when he shifts.

“Hi,” he murmurs.  “Time is it?”

“Probably around five,” she answers, deliberately pitching her voice lower.  He shifts again.  “Why?  You in a hurry to be somewhere?”

“Well, now that you mention it…”  Bruce’s voice is casual, but she knows what he’s trying to pull and pinches his stomach muscles.  The man actually  _squeaks_ because of that, which makes her want to crow in triumph because she just made Bruce Banner squeak.  There aren’t many who can say the same.

He rolls to face her - yes, she can definitely get used to early-morning-rumpled-Bruce - and presses his lips to hers, all gentleness where before she had been playful.  She’s content to let him lead in that vein for now, especially when he starts massaging her breasts.  Natasha breaks off the kiss.

“Would it be too weird if -  _okay_ , yeah, do that again - if I just came into the lab on random days and asked you to give me boob massages?  I promise I won’t jump your bones if you do.”

“Liar.”  Bruce tweaks her left nipple, making her breath hiss out.  “Plus I’m pretty sure we’d give someone an aneurysm if we did.”

“That someone being Tony?”

“No, he’d ask to join - well, he’d ask Pepper’s permission, then he would ask to join.  I was talking about Clint.”

Natasha kisses him again, making it much dirtier than the last one, and wraps her hand around his cock, already hard.  One of the best things about sex with Bruce is that he’s an excellent multi-tasker - he doesn’t even have to think to know where she wants to go with this.  One of his hands trails down from her breast to her inner thigh, pausing there.

She starts stroking his length at the same time that he slips one finger inside, pressing his thumb against her clit.  Natasha hums throatily, shivering when he ducks his head and sucks the sweat off her skin under her breast.  She grinds against his hand, making a whining noise in her throat and pausing to squeeze his balls gently.

Out of nowhere there is a horrendous noise in the air, like a screeching, before she recognizes it as her ringtone and shoves her face into Bruce’s neck with a groan.  

“I have to get that,” she mumbles.

“Technically you don’t  _have_ to…”

“Yeah, but I’d prefer to know if someone’s sending me death threats or something,” Natasha says, as they pull away from each other.  She grabs the phone and holds it up to her ear, leaning back against the headboard.  Bruce just curls up next to her, drawing lazy circles on her thigh.

“Natasha?”

Her eyebrows shoot up.  “Hey, Pepper.  Everything okay in Hong Kong?”

“Not really, no.”

Shit.  “What’s up?”

“Look - okay, this is awkward,” Pepper sighs.  “Could you put Bruce on the phone?  I know he’s there.”

Natasha glances down at Bruce and gestures at the phone.  He doesn’t look surprised that Pepper knows, and takes it with the hand that wasn’t just between her thighs.  Natasha smiles wickedly, grabs the hand that _was_ in the aforementioned area, and sucks his index finger into her mouth.

He chokes a little on his greeting to Pepper, shooting her a mock-glare while she savors the taste of herself.  She plays nice while he nods along with whatever Pepper’s saying, occasionally humming in reply to let her know that he’s following along.  It almost makes Natasha cringe at how his speech is indicative of his languid, in-the-mood-for-coitus state, but Pepper ignores these things like a champ.

“Yeah, okay.  I can do that.”  He sits up but doesn’t stand, opting instead to curl into Natasha’s side with the phone still at his ear.  “I’ll try.  Thanks.”

There is no one who is able to spot resignation in someone’s tone faster than Natasha, and she feels the sweep of disappointment before she really registers what’s happening.  He gives back her phone; she stares at her inbox with eight unread messages, then tosses it onto the bedside table.

“Conference,” Bruce explains.  “Tony’s ‘indisposed’, as Pepper put it.  I know about as much on the A.R.C. reactor as he does, so she’s asked me to fill in for him.”

“Okay.”

Bruce cranes his head to look up at her.  “No complaints?  Really?”

“Well, I will miss my bed heater.”

“Ha.  Thanks.”

Natasha belies her caustic statement by ducking her head to kiss his temple.  “Bruce, I wasn’t complaining.  I’d assumed I was going with you.”

Bruce blinks.  “You want to go?”

“I can enjoy a science-y convention thing.”

“’The only kind of language I can’t exactly speak is the convoluted dialect of physical science’.  Your words, not mine.”

True, but Natasha’s honestly more interested in making sure that someone doesn’t decide that Bruce Banner being in a public place would make a top-notch terrorist attack.  Bruce has probably figured that out, already; he’s just teasing her at this point.  She combs her fingers through his hair a few times before gently pulling on it so that she can kiss him again.  

“Can’t let you go anywhere without your bodyguard,” she warns.

He laughs.  “Oh, no, of course not.  What if my bodyguard decides she wants a boob massage and then jumps my bones because of it?”

“Sounds like something torrid.”  Natasha moves seamlessly, rolling her weight so that she’s straddling his lap.  “You would never engage in such an affair, Dr. Banner.”

“No, of course not,” he answers, eyes glazing over as he gazes up at her.  “I’m classy like that.”

Natasha can’t help it - she laughs, then draws him in for another kiss.

* * *

Hong Kong isn’t a short trip, but Natasha alternates between trying to figure out ways to hack Tony’s new A.I. and cuddling or having sex with Bruce.  Bruce, for his part, is either reading his Neil Gaiman book or suggesting celebrity voices that Natasha can replace F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice with.  The two of them have another conference call with Pepper, who tells Natasha that she can get her a spare Stark Security uniform so that she can blend in better.  Natasha weighs the pro and cons of this - the pro being that she won’t be suspicious (every Avenger has security during a public appearance), but the cons being that it will require a disguise and she will probably attract less attention as Bruce’s date.

That will also require a disguise, however, and it goes outside of her and Bruce’s negotiations.  One of which is that they never, ever risk going public.

So Natasha finds herself standing on the tarmac, changed into a suit and feeling a bit like one of the desk-job S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.  To be fair, it’s worth the look on Bruce’s face when he sees her wearing a tie.

“Very convincing part of the severe security guard,” he murmurs to her as they stride towards the company car waiting for them.  Natasha has to resist the urge to place her hand on the small of his back; Melanie Sandriesson is not a touchy person.  In fact, Melanie Sandriesson has slight haphephobia, which is why she took hours of self-defense classes growing up and went into the security sector.  She has a baton in her stocking so that she doesn’t have to touch people.

She’s curt, impersonal, and has long, straight brown hair.  Bruce is not unnerved, though, not even a little, and she reminds herself to thank him for that later.  So often her ability to become someone else is what frightens people (if only they knew).

The convention is packed, as she knew it would be, but Bruce is a master at making himself smaller and less noticeable.  She just has to trail a few feet behind him, scanning the crowd around them without moving her eyes.  There is a conversation about the Hadron Collider a few feet away from her, and two women chatting to each other in Mandarin to her right.  She can see the tension in Bruce’s back due to the press of people, but they keep going until they reach the upper floor of the hotel lobby, where there are less people wandering.

They’re directed to the top floor, unsurprisingly.

Pepper’s waiting for them on a couch that’s probably more expensive than all of Natasha’s old apartments combined, sipping a glass of champagne and looking completely relaxed.  She beams at the two of them when they come in, and Natasha quickly scans the room for bugs before removing her wig.  Bruce is all too willing to give her a scalp massage when she puts her head in his lap.

“Don’t get too comfortable, you two,” Pepper warns.  “Bruce, the panel is starting tomorrow at 9:00 AM.  I’m guessing you’ve already familiarized yourself with the itinerary?”

“Yes.”  Natasha loosens her tie a bit, hears him gulp, and grins.

“To be honest, I was actually counting on  _both_ of you being here.”

The headiness of the moment vanishes in an instant; Natasha sits up and fixes Pepper with a stare, which the other woman calmly returns.  Even so, the C.E.O. of Stark Industries is showing just enough desperation in her clenched hands that Natasha gestures for her to continue.

“I know I said that Tony was indisposed, but the truth is that he’s at a different conference,” Pepper admits.  “I booked a panel at this one in his name because Maria informed me about rumors involving an A.I.M. remnant setting up shop here.  He knows that I’m here, but he just things I’m taking a few days for myself while pretending to scope out potential R&D employees.”

A.I.M. is personal for Pepper in ways that it isn’t for the rest of them.  Natasha gets it.  She’s still relieved that Pepper was sensible enough to call for some help, though.

“Bruce, to be honest I just needed you to speak at this,” Pepper tells him.  “Natasha - you don’t have to help if you don’t want to.”

Natasha thinks of growing up as a marionette, dancing on her strings until she’d burned them herself, along with her puppetmaster.  She thinks of years of hazy flashes and pain, of walking away from a building on fire and never looking back.  She knows a thing or two about personal vendettas.  “I’ll do it.”

Pepper doesn’t smile, but her gratitude is evident in how her whole frame relaxes.  Bruce is watching Natasha carefully, but she taps him once on the thigh to let him know that she’s fine.  

They spend the rest of the day wandering the convention.  Natasha’s always a few feet behind Bruce.  She keeps herself at an angle that enables her to keep an eye on him while keeping another on everyone else.  Every so often her phone rings with a text from Pepper with a new update on what else she’s found out.  Natasha will be doing actual recon on the base tomorrow, while Bruce is speaking.  It’s risky, but she’ll just have to have faith that S.I. security has everything tightly locked down.

When she and Bruce have both retired for the evening, and they’re both lounging on the bed feeling warm from indulging in alcohol earlier, she lets him take off the tie.

* * *

The panel goes off without a hitch.  It’s not until after that everything goes to hell.

Bruce, against all expectations, had enjoyed himself.  Not one person asked him about being the Hulk, and the questions fueled him into enthusiastically pacing the stage while he rambled out answers.  He starts smiling when he really digs into a topic, and feels himself flush when people start cheering, slightly drunk on euphoria.

His guard (Lita, a burly but friendly woman) had been escorting him back to Pepper’s suite when the ground shook.

It feels like someone has dumped a bucket of ice water on him; panicked thoughts crowd his brain before he can think rationally on the situation, and he can feel the backs of his eyes start to throb.  His ribs rattle slightly as he breathes in deeply.  Lita has her gun out next to him, but she’s waiting for him to calm down.  

“I have instructions to get you back to Miss Potts should anything happen,” she warns.

Bruce nods.  Logically, he knows it’s for the best.  That doesn’t stop him from wanting to jump out of the nearest window and transform before he hits the ground, though.

They get back to the suite without incident.  Pepper is there as well, arguing furiously with someone on the phone before putting them on hold and arguing with someone else - the cycle continues.  Bruce nods his thanks to Lita, who goes to stand just outside the hotel room door.  He goes over to the window, but there’s no sign of anything amiss - the explosion must’ve happened on the other side of the building.  He paces back and forth a few times, debating on taking out the bottle of whiskey he knows Pepper has hidden away, but decides that it would only worsen his mood.

Pepper has just hung up on yet another concerned government official.  She turns to Bruce.  “Okay, so it sounds like - “

The door bangs open, and five men in black wielding very large guns stream inside, shouting for them to get on their knees.  Bruce and Pepper make eye contact, but raise their hands up and do as they’re told.  The voices are American, so they’re more than likely A.I.M.  He tries not to think about what must have happened to Lita.

He glances at Pepper, but it’s clear that she’s not afraid.  Just angry.

Bruce tries not to flinch when one of the men delivers a stunning blow to the back of her head, but his muscles twitch in spite of himself.  He can feel the Hulk simmering just beneath the surface, but Pepper just shakes her head minutely when they make eye contact.  She is clearly dazed from the blow, but she is still formidable, even now.

“Thought hiring a spy would get rid of us?” One of the men snarls.  “Thought you learned your lesson, Potts.  You think you can fuck us over in every other country - ”

“Everyone needs a hobby,” Bruce can’t help snarking.  He gets a hit of his own for that, and nearly sees stars.  This is good; he can draw their attention.  Get it away from Pepper.

Pepper, evidently, disagrees.  “It wasn’t even much of a hobby, to be honest.”  This time one of them presses the barrel of their gun to the back of Pepper’s head, hard enough to push her face into the carpet.  Bruce feels like he’s holding his breath, waiting for the man to shoot her.  Pepper’s exhales are short and sharp.

Something - a shadow, Bruce barely sees it - leaps onto the back of the man who has Pepper at gunpoint; there’s a gurgle before he realizes that they knifed him in the neck.  Natasha - because it has to be Natasha - covers Pepper’s body with her own as the others fire, letting out a yell of rage before she swings her baton at another, clubbing him hard enough that he falls and doesn’t get up again.  

Bruce inhales before elbowing the guy next to him in the nuts, grabbing his gun, and tossing it to Natasha, who shoots the third and fourth, before turning to the fifth only to find that Pepper has him in a headlock, his own gun on the ground uselessly in front of him.  Natasha shrugs, then knocks him out as well, allowing Pepper to drop him like a sack of flour.  

There’s a moment where the only thing Bruce can hear is the sound of heavy breathing from all three of them.

Then Natasha collapses.

* * *

Natasha can remember everything up to the moment that she knocked out the thug that Pepper was restraining.  After that, things become less clear; she knows there were shouts, then there were sirens, then there was a smell of antiseptic and a soothing voice.  As she slowly re-enters consciousness, she smiles slightly when she feels a thumb stroking her knuckles.

Bruce looks terrible, which means he hasn’t slept.

“You lost too much blood,” he explains hoarsely, not smiling.  “From where they got you in your hamstring.”

Right.  She does remember that - remembers feeling the bullet entering her thigh, remembers limping back to the hotel as fast as she could, remembers pushing the pain back because saving Pepper and Bruce was more important.  She registers an I.V. in her arm and a dull throbbing in her leg, and the blood bag hooked up to her.

She throws him a questioning look.

“Lita was a match,” he explains, and something in his voice breaks.  Natasha closes her eyes and wishes that she could stab something.

“Are we still in Hong Kong?”  Bruce offers her a glass of water when she asks, then helps her sit up so that she can drink it.  In addition to her thigh being blown out from behind she has several broken ribs and bruises on her face - remnants from the explosion.

“Yeah, for now.”  He lapses into silence for a moment. Words as consolation can only go so far, and they both know it.  She rolls onto her side, scooting over to the far side of the hospital bed as she can and patting the scant space beside her.

He raises an eyebrow at her but doesn’t protest, climbing in next to her and letting her wrap one arm around his waist.  The two of them barely fit on the bed, but she tucks Bruce’s head between her neck and her shoulder and feels him relax against her.  She doesn’t know how long he’s been awake, but it must have been a while because he’s asleep almost instantly.

Natasha, however, stays awake.  Sleep won’t come easily to her anymore.


End file.
